I hear you. It’s disturbing to hear teams are “tanking” and essentially writing off being competitive. Yet at the same time, they expect their fans to keep paying and coming to the games, and watching on TV.
And yet MLB had record revenues last year.
Still, you can tell they are starting to get nervous. The average MLB fan is aging. I’m 50 and my kids couldn’t care less about baseball. Don’t get me wrong, if the Yankees are in the World Series they’d watch. But otherwise, they follow from afar and don’t buy shirts/hats etc.
This is why baseball is tinkering with all these rules to speed up the game. But installing pitch clocks, and minimizing the amount of batters each pitcher must face shortens the game from say 3:05 to 2:50. Does that really matter?
The length is not why they’re not watching. To them, it’s boring. They want instant gratification. They want constant action. They’re not interested in nuance; long term strategy and the build up of tension.
It’s a shame. But I bet my kids kids won’t play baseball unless they’ve moved to a part of the country where Lacrosse doesn’t exist and baseball is still huge.